by The Rev. Rich Heinz
Three years ago, Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast. People faced massive hardships and loss of property. While the media focused mainly on New Orleans, a sizeable region of our nation was hurting. Chaos and violence arose in various flooded and damaged neighborhoods. While our government was “getting its ducks in a row” to respond, many said it was too little, too late. It appeared to many news interviewees that the President and other officials did not have their priorities straight.
This week the Lord who stilled the storm on the Sea of Galilee permitted Hurricane Gustav to blow in from the Gulf. It fell short of the predicted strength, and damaged far less than expected. Yet the loss is still quite real, and the hurt still cries for healing.
In apparent response to the criticisms from 2005, President Bush did not speak in person to his party’s convention this week. He remained in Washington, after surveying the hit region and meeting with disaster response coordinators. Even though his words and actions were for the good of all when Katrina hit, with Gustav the President has been sure to send a clear message that his priorities are straight.
The Lord demands that our priorities are straight, as well. “You shall have no other gods,” He commands. This statement begins His Ten Commandments, with the others flowing from it. If we truly could keep this mandate, we would be able to keep all of His Law. All would be well, as we earned God’s favor, keeping Him as our Top Priority.
How well do we do? Not well at all. In fact, we are miserable at having no other gods. The Lord is NOT our top priority, no matter how hard we try. For several millennia, since the serpent seduced Eve and her husband, the Lord has not been the top priority – we make ourselves our top priorities! And as Saint James reminds us, “For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it.” (James 2:10) With our failure of priorities, we have failed completely.
Yet the Lord reminds you today: your priorities do not save you! In fact, He tells you that you are His priority! Our loving Savior displays the ultimate in love and mercy as He gives everything for you, suffering and dying in your place. You are His priority as He places His name upon you in Holy Baptism, and frees you in Holy Absolution. You are His priority as He places salvation in your ears with His preaching and in your mouth with His Holy Supper.
Yes, you are Jesus’ priority, as he brings you forgiveness, life, and salvation. The storms of this life will come and go. And the love and mercy we are gifted to show others during these hard times are a blessing. Thanks be to God; He does this all for you!
Rev. Rich Heinz is Pastor of St. John’s Lutheran Church in Lanesville, IN. Pastor Heinz also serves as editor of the Higher Things Website.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, God has given you all things in Jesus. Forgiveness is yours. Life is yours. Heaven is yours. The Lord Himself is yours in Christ. You are washed and claimed by the Lord in Holy Baptism. The sins that once stood against you have been cast aside by Holy Absolution. The Body and Blood of Jesus are your regular feast. The Good News of the Son of God’s death for your sins is the testimony of the Lord Himself that He loves you and cares for you in and through His Son. That is true riches!
You’re valuable because you are in Christ. Because you are God’s child in Jesus. Because the Son of God became what you are. Because He came and took on your flesh. You are valuable because the Son of God gives you value by taking on your sins and taking them to the cross. The value you have is that you have been redeemed, bought back from sin and death by the death and resurrection of Jesus. If the Lord has bought you, claimed you, made you His own, do you think He’s just going to throw you to the wolves? Let you starve? Keep you out of heaven after all? No way! You are His. Do you suffer? Jesus has suffered even more. What pain you have from this life, Jesus had more. He came into this world to take every bit of your pain, your suffering, your worry, and all your sins upon Himself, to take them away. When you are tempted to worry, to get cranky about your mammon, to get all worked up over the stuff and junk of this life, then stop a minute and behold the cross and there be convinced and certain that your Father is looking out for you.
The Scriptures are full of examples of people who are at the end of their ropes, yet the Father provides for them. For example, the widow we heard about who had nothing left but enough for a last meal for her and her son. Yet the Lord provides for her a never failing bottle of oil and jar of flour. They don’t run out. Or consider the children of Israel who wandered in the wilderness for forty years, yet their clothes and shoes never wore out. Consider the preaching of the apostles who had little or nothing of their own, yet were provided for wherever they went.
There’s a LOT of hype out there about this book, and it usually starts like this: “Well I haven’t read the book and don’t want to read the book, but here’s my opinion about what I’ve heard about this book…” Or: “So-and-so from this branch of theology liked it/didn’t like it, and that tells me everything I need to know about the issue.”
I was taught by the late, great Gerhard Forde that you can talk about theology, even talk about Jesus Himself and everything He did all day long, but until it is made personal – until it’s all for you – it’s not the Gospel. It doesn’t do anyone any good to talk about how Jesus died and rose unless Jesus died and rose for you. That personal aspect of the Gospel and the centrality of Christ’s work is made abundantly clear over and over again in The Shack. Every doctrine – even the Trinity itself, is explained as being for us. That one was new and different for me to think about, yet so consistent with the larger picture I’m surprised I hadn’t thought of it sooner.
The problem with failing to address the delivery of God’s gifts for us is that it also leaves the reader wondering if we are being taught universalism in this book. Clearly, The Shack teaches universal atonement (so do we). But when there is no concrete delivery of the benefits from that atonement achieved for everyone through the means of grace, there is nothing to be rejected and therefore no real consequences for rejecting all that God has done for us. Young deftly dodges questions about this issue when interviewed, and carefully avoids it in the book. Strangely, for all his emphasis on everything being for us, Young seems to be ignorant of just how Jesus makes Himself concretely for us.
Absolutely incredible isn’t it?
Absolutely incredible isn’t it? Saying no to the Son’s Good Friday salvation of the world-wedding banquet. Filling time for worship with all kinds of stuff. Everyone has an excuse. No, everyone has millions of excuses. But they all ring hollow compared with the abundant generosity and richness of the Son’s wedding banquet.
And so incredibly the King even supplies the clothes for the wedding party’s bash. Wedding garments. Provided most graciously. He clothes His guests with His Son’s perfection. His Son’s righteousness. “For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have been clothed with Christ,” Scripture says.
During a recent trip to the movie theater, I settled into my comfortable seat, ready for the film to begin. I breathed a sigh of contentment as the lights dimmed, the previews started, the smell of popcorn wafted to my nostrils…and the texting began. “Wait!” I thought to myself. “Why do small bluish cell phones seem to rival the big screen for the main source of light in this theater? Am I the only one in this theater that, after paying eight dollars for my ticket, actually wants to watch the movie!?!”
Even our relationship with God can be that way. We are so focused on the small things in front of us that we lose sight of the big picture. We worry about our finances, where our future is headed, or what people think of us. In our narrowed vision, only tuned in to the small bluish screen of our lives, we panic at the possibility that we might lose contact with anyone for even a small moment. We worry that we would miss some all-important news, or that we would never be able to regain that moment lost.
Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths. Those words from today’s Old Testament reading set up for us the opposition that frequently arises between our ways and the ways of the Lord. We have our notions of how He OUGHT to act; what He ought to do; how things should be. But He consistently blows us away with doing things in a way that appears downright silly to us. His ways, though, pan out in the end, and we’re left confessing that we’re not nearly so smart as we thought we were.
Come and see! That’s the constant invitation of the Christian Church when she encounters those who are skeptical of our Lord and His claims. We invite them to come with us to where the Lord may be found – here as we gather in His name, around His words, and His Holy Sacrament. We gather to Him, and we know the great task of evangelism isn’t persuading others to believe, but rather inviting them to come with us to meet Jesus of Nazareth and let HIM do the persuading.
Some have opined that Nathanael was reading or meditating on that passage about Jacob and the vision of the ladder, so that Jesus’ words would be all the more astonishing. He is the link between earth and heaven, the eternal Son come down to earth precisely so that we can ascend in and with Him to the Father. Not under a fig tree, upon a tree nonetheless, He will hang between heaven and earth, uplifted on His Cross, pouring out His blood, so that all who shelter beneath that TREE in faith, receive forgiveness for all sins and rescue from death and the devil, and can come home with Him to the Father’s house.
OK. I’ll admit it. Jesus is making me nervous. As a Lutheran, it’s been drummed into my brain my whole life: we are saved by grace, not by our good works. Jesus saves us, not what we do. Our sins are forgiven because Jesus died for them, not because we do good works for other people. So when this young expert in the Law of Moses says, “Love God. Love your neighbor” and Jesus says, “Do this and you will live”–that makes me nervous!
That is why, when the man gets beat up and robbed and left half dead in the story, the priest and the Levite pass by on the other side. What Jesus is teaching this lawyer who wants to justify himself is that HE, the man, is the guy who is beaten up and robbed. His righteousness is stolen by the devil and he is beaten to a pulp by sin. And when the Law comes, what does it do? It can’t help. It can’t save. It can’t rescue. It just tells us what to do and what will happen if we don’t do it. That is why the priest and the Levite, who represent the Law in Jesus’ story, just go on their merry ways. They can’t help. But a Samaritan does. He has compassion on the man. And having compassion doesn’t mean he just stands there and feels sorry for the guy, it means he does stuff. He cleans and bandages his wounds and takes him to the inn to recover. He pays the expenses.
Now, I don’t want you to think there is nothing to do for your neighbor now. The lawyer’s problem was that he wanted to say he loved God without doing anything for anyone else. God doesn’t need our hugs and kisses. We love God BY loving our neighbor. What Jesus is teaching this man and us is that our neighbor was not put on this earth to be the way in which we get ourselves to heaven! But our neighbor is given to us to love and serve. Jesus is teaching us to have compassion on others not by thinking about them but by DOING for them. When you see someone in need, don’t mess around with whether you like them or don’t like them or whether they’ve done anything for you or things like that. Rather, if you see them in need, help them out! And NOT because it saves you. Your salvation, your justification, is a done deal. Squared up by Jesus. The price is paid by the Samaritan and His money purse. You—you are free to have compassion on your neighbor, precisely because you DON’T have to impress God. Which is a good thing, since we often mess up loving our neighbor so much. Never mind! Back at it. When you find yourself trying to be religious without loving your neighbor, repent! Likewise, when you find yourself trying to justify what you do or don’t do to God, repent! Back to the inn, back to the church, back to oil and wine, that is, font and altar and Word. More Jesus for you. For He doesn’t leave you but comes back to check on you. That is, He comes over and over to give you His gifts for forgiveness and healing.
What a week! Saturday night (really Sunday morning, Beijing time) ended a week of often staying up until 1:30 a.m. watching our incredible swim team – and particularly Michael Phelps. Nightly we would see his sisters and mother, faithfully and devotedly in the stands, cheering and savoring his amazing feat! But one thing—one person—was noticeably absent: Michael’s father.
Now, for every tear shed or hurtful word uttered, Jesus has forgiven and restored you. No matter how many times you have broken up with friends, been devastated by loved ones, or crushed by divorce or separation, our loving Lord heals and renews you, giving the calm assurance that He and His Father are with you. Not that He is with you in some magical, intangible way. He unites Himself to you in His Holy Gifts as He promises: Holy Baptism, Holy Absolution, the proclamation of His Holy Gospel, and in His Holy Supper! So when you see Jesus in these Holy Gifts, you see the Father as well!
When I went to see Clone Wars, I was expecting a corny, slapstick mockery of Star Wars ala Kim Possible, The Fairly Oddparents, or any of the other animated kid’s shows popular today. What I discovered was a slightly corny, but entirely enthralling return to the glory days of the Star Wars franchise.
The film’s biggest surprise, however, is that this movie rescues Anakin as a character. By training a padawan as reckless as himself, he gains some responsibility and learns to care about someone other than himself. He can understand Ahsoka better than anyone else, and we can tell that he feels a responsibility for her behavior because of that.
